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Giovanni Batz, Concepcion Santay, and Zully Juarez at a speaking even in Los Angeles on Mayan resistance to development projects.

Since 1987, the Voiceless Speak Fund has provided direct assistance to Guatemalans raising awareness about the human rights situation in Guatemala or organizing in their communities in the US to defend the rights of Guatemalans living here.

President-elect Jimmy Morales will be inaugurated today as Guatemala’s next leader, amid new protests and ongoing uncertainty about how he plans to run the country. Riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, Morales—a comedian with no political experience and backed by military hard-liners—achieved an unexpected first-round win in September before defeating former first lady Sandra Torres in the October 25 runoff election.

Although Morales has not yet officially announced who will make up his Cabinet, information has begun to circulate via “leaks” on social media sites. Morales has already suffered a political setback related to his Cabinet when one of his top advisers, Edgar Ovalle Maldonado, was among a group of ex-military leaders accused of crimes against humanity on Jan. 6. For now, Ovalle cannot face prosecution due to his status as an incoming lawmaker, though Attorney General Thelma Aldana has said that her office has asked the Supreme Court to consider lifting his immunity. Continue reading →

Next week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hold its 156 period of sessions, including three hearings on October 22 focused on Guatemala: Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Guatemala; Reports of Criminalization of Human Rights Defenders and Justice Operators in Guatemala; and Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in the Context of the Activities of the Palm Oil Industry of Guatemala. Click here for a full schedule as well as times and locations for each hearing.

There will also be numerous opportunities to attend public events and hear from human rights defenders from Central America:

*GHRC-Sponsored Events*

PUBLIC EVENT: THE RIGHT TO DECIDE – STORIES FROM LATIN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES IMPACTED BY EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIESPanelists from Guatemala and El Salvador will discuss the recent struggles of communities in both countries in defense of their land, water and livelihoods that are threatened by mining.

Time and Date: Tuesday, October 20 | 1-2 PM ESTLocation: Oxfam America, DC, 1101 17th St NW 1300 Washington, DC 20036PUBLIC EVENT: “CORRUPTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS”Representatives from civil society organizations from Honduras and Guatemala will discuss the situation of corruption and human rights in both countries. The event will be in Spanish, and a live stream will be available here: http://ustre.am/1iq8N.

FILM: “Resistencia: The Fight for The Aguan Valley”DC Premiere of a groundbreaking documentary with the filmmaker in attendance about the 2009 coup d’état in Honduras sparking a landless farmers’ movement that took control of the plantations. Cost: $10. More information.

BRIEFING: CORRUPTION, IMPUNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN HONDURASAs corruption scandals continue to erupt in Honduras—including confirmed evidence that millions were siphoned off from the national health service to fund the ruling party’s and the president’s election fund—Hondurans across the political spectrum are demanding an independent, UN-sponsored Commission on Impunity, like the successful CICIG in Guatemala.

FILM SCREENING: IXCANULThis movie, made by Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante, tells the story of a young indigenous woman who does not want to live in the modern world, until it saves her life during a pregnancy complication. Free and open to the public.

BRIEFING: Defending Community and Indigenous Rights in GuatemalaPlease join the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission for a briefing on defending community and indigenous rights in Guatemala, with panelists Daniel Pascual (CUC) and Rafael Maldonado (CALAS).

Time and Date: Friday, October 23 | 11 AM EST Location: 2255 Rayburn House Office Building

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Hispanic Heritage Month celebration with GHRC on October 7!

We are especially thankful to Haydee’s Restaurant for hosting and sponsoring our event, to our volunteer musicians Kino and Elena Lacayo, and to the GHRC Board for organizing our fall get together.

Left: Members of the band Kino; Right: Elena Lacayo

Your attendance at Haydee’s directly supported our work, as the restaurant has generously donated a portion of sales from the night to GHRC. We also sold tickets for the raffle of an ipad mini — the lucky winner was Rafael Merchan.

In April 2015, Concepción Santay Gomez was awarded funds from GHRC’s Voiceless Speak Programto support his project to educate university students and others about human rights issues related to the construction of mega-projects in Guatemala.

Santay Gomez is heavily involved in human rights work in his hometown of Cotzal, Guatemala, where he has advocated for the rights of the local indigenous Maya Ixil community. He is an active member of the Alcaldía Indígena (the group of ancestral indigenous authorities), which promotes Ixil culture and works to defend the region’s territories from mega-mining and hydroelectric projects. Santay Gomez is also a co-founder of Ixil University, a three-year educational program that teaches students about Ixil ways of knowing and indigenous rights.

Santay Gomez organized a speaking tour along the West Coast of the US to share information on his own community’s efforts to prevent mega-mining projects from being constructed in the El Quiche region of Guatemala. He discussed in depth the arrival of the Italian-owned hydroelectric dam Palo Viejo, which was authorized by the Guatemalan government in 2008, despite the fact that local residents were never consulted about the plan. When the dam was completed in 2012, thousands of acres of Ixil land had been seized and numerous neighborhood leaders had been persecuted for standing up against the project. Continue reading →

Following the two-year anniversary of the genocide sentence in Guatemala, experts on transitional justice and rule of law – including US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Stephen Rapp – gathered on May 11 to share reflections and analysis about the genocide case.

In Ambassador Rapp’s comments, he highlighted the importance of the case and the ongoing commitment of the US government to support victims’ struggle for justice and an independent judiciary:

“My role With President Obama’s administration is to work with these international courts, including the International Criminal Court (ICC), so that they can be effective – but recognizing always that it’s better when justice happens near the scene of the crime, near where the victims live, near the affected communities.

Even in the principles now of international justice, we’ve established that certainly it’s important that we hold responsible — if the evidence is there — the most powerful people in societies. And if it we can do that at the national level, that’s where it should be done. At the ICC they call that complementarity – that the international system is only a complement; it only fills in the gaps where the national system fails.

But we know, and you know, how challenging it can be to establish justice against powerful forces in society; power does not yield willingly, it doesn’t yield to orders, necessarily, on a piece of paper, and can use the kind of power and violence they’re accused of to intimidate and destroy the possibility of fair justice. Continue reading →